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Episode 78: 5 Steps to Creating Content
186 Plays5 years ago
Today's guest is Jess Dang, founder of Cook Smarts, an online meal planning service. Jess started Cook Smarts in 2012 to help families live healthier lives, feel empowered and inspired in the kitchen, and to lighten the mental load of meal planning.
Jess and I chat about content creation and the 5 step approach she takes in creating content for Cook Smarts that you can apply to your own business. And, she's really the perfect guest to be chatting about content creation, since it is really what her business is built around.
Krista and I are signing up for a 30 day free trial of Cook Smarts, so we will have to keep you updated on how that goes. If you are also interested in a trial, head on over to cooksmarts.com to check it out.
For the show notes, go to https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-jess-dang-episode-78/
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Transcript
Jess Dang's Health Journey
00:00:05
Speaker
I was donating blood to my school blood drive. I was a senior in high school. And a couple weeks after that, I got a letter back from the agency that was running the blood drive that said that my blood couldn't be accepted because it tested positive for the hepatitis C virus. So this was a total, like, out of left field. I thought I was, you know, I'd work hard in school. I was just going to be having a carefree senior year. And then all of a sudden I get this letter that says, like, you might have a potentially life-threatening virus.
Introduction to Brands That Book Show
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:50
Speaker
Today's guest is Jess Dang, founder of CookSmart's online meal planning service.
Empowering Families with CookSmarts
00:00:56
Speaker
Jess started CookSmart's in 2012 to help families live healthier lives, feel empowered and inspired in the kitchen, and to lighten the mental load of meal planning. Jess and I chat about content creation and the five step approach that she takes in creating content for CookSmart's that you could apply to your own business. And she's really the perfect guest to be chatting about content creation since it's really what her business is built around.
00:01:16
Speaker
Krista and I are actually signing up for a 30-day free trial of CookSmarts, so we'll have to keep you updated on how that goes. If you're also interested in a trial, head on over to CookSmarts.com to check it out. Be sure to check out the show notes at DavyAndKrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode, and I want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content that you'd like to see on the Brands That Book podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, head on over to the DavyAndKrista Facebook page and send us a message or DM us on Instagram at DavyAndKrista. Now, onto the episode.
00:01:50
Speaker
All right, welcome to another episode of the Brands That Book Show. I have Jess Dang here with me of CookSmarts.com. And I'm excited to chat with Jess because Jess is probably our first cook, that sort of industry guest on
From Corporate to CookSmarts
00:02:05
Speaker
the show. And there's a number of reasons that I was interested in chatting with you, Jess, not only because I want to pick your brain about content, but also because meal planning is just like the bane of my existence. So maybe you can give me a few tips as we dive into the episode.
00:02:19
Speaker
Yes, everybody's got to eat. So tell us a little bit about your background. Like I said, just as a reminder for the audience, we'll be chatting about content creation. And I love how you kind of described your industry before we actually hit record here, you said you were a cast business. So could play off of SaaS software as a business, you are a content as a service business. And I hadn't really thought about that.
00:02:42
Speaker
or thought about it that way in terms of what you do. So I'm excited just to hear how you go about creating content on such a consistent basis, and then of course, disseminating that content and how content has played a role in building CookSmarts. But before we get into all that, share a little bit about how you started CookSmarts and a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey. Sure. So I started CookSmarts back in 2012. I was in the corporate world for almost a decade. I was a real spreadsheet nerd.
00:03:08
Speaker
I love numbers, I love manipulating numbers, I'm all about efficiency. But I turned 30 in 2011 and then at that point decided that I was gonna quit my job and start this totally crazy other venture. So that's kind of the short story, but kind of the original origin of Cooksmarts really started actually way, way long ago when I was 17. This was back in 1999 and I was donating blood to my school blood drive. I was a senior in high school and a couple weeks after that I got a letter
00:03:38
Speaker
back from the agency that was running the blood drive that said that my blood couldn't be accepted because it tested positive for the hepatitis C virus. So this was like a total like out of left field. I thought I was you know I'd worked hard in school. I was just going to be having a carefree senior year and then all of a sudden I get this letter that says like you might have a
00:03:57
Speaker
potentially life-threatening virus. And that kind of led me on a whole crazy health journey that was pretty hard at times.
Discovering Hepatitis C
00:04:03
Speaker
But kind of long story short, I went through, you know, went to see a lot of doctors, went through a lot of testing, and they determined that I was at the point where my liver was damaged enough that I would need to go through chemotherapy, basically. I found out through all this that I got in the virus actually as a baby and through a blood transfusion. So I lived with it all my life and just never knew.
00:04:23
Speaker
And yeah, it was one of those things that all of a sudden I was the 17 year old thought I was going to be going to college, but instead dealing with all these doctor's visits and thinking about like what treatment was going to be like.
Overcoming Hepatitis C
00:04:35
Speaker
So I went through a year of treatment, you know, gave myself
00:04:38
Speaker
shots, lots of medicine, and it resulted in all sorts of crazy symptoms like hair loss, fatigue, anxiety. And it was a rough year where I felt like I just did not have control of my life. And I was really lucky at the end of the year, they gave me cure, the virus was undetectable. And they said, you know, Jess, just go like live life as a normal danger at this point. And, you know, I just wasn't ready to do that. I just felt like, you know, I felt like
00:05:04
Speaker
I didn't believe the good news. And so it just took me a while to kind of get over that. And I said to myself, like, if I live to see the age of 30, I am going to do something to help other people live healthier. And yeah, so, you know, no surprise, I did live to see 30. I'm 38 now. And so yeah, I've had eight years of creating CookSmarts and really creating a place that help other people live healthier. And it's been really just an amazing journey.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah. And so is that odd for that not to have been found? Like for basically 18 years, right? It sounds like. Yeah. I mean, there can be some latency to the virus. I think starting in high school, like late high school, I was starting to feel like not great at times. They kept testing me for mono because I was always so tired. I was a varsity runner my sophomore year, but then my junior year, I just like couldn't get back into those times. I was just really tired. And so yeah. And then
00:05:54
Speaker
It was just no one had thought like, why would a 17 year old kid have hepatitis C? That's not like the prime demographic for it. And so we just hadn't thought like, Oh, I didn't even know I had a pledge of blood transfusion when I was a baby. So it wasn't one of the things that came up, you know, back then blood just wasn't tested for it.
00:06:10
Speaker
And now, of course, everything is tested very well, but it was one of those things where there was not a lot known about it. There weren't even a lot of treatment options. And nowadays, there are. So that's really great news for folks that are going through that now. But yeah, it was a totally just...
00:06:25
Speaker
crazy experience for me. So did your diet play into kind of the recovery of that? I mean, I know you mentioned that chemotherapy and I imagine that there's no diet out there that would cure hepatitis C. No. But at the same time, I think a diet can do pretty incredible things. So is that part of the reason that you started Cook's Marts or is that kind of how you got into, you know, just a healthier lifestyle?
CookSmarts' Evolution
00:06:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think for me, really like after going through that experience, you're just so much more in tune with your health and your body and what it like how to care for it. And after you go through something so physical, that's like both like physical and emotionally mentally draining like that. You just want to do everything that you can to, you know, to care for yourself. And so for me, I in my early twenties, I really got into cooking. I just was and I have always loved to eat. And so cooking really was that next step.
00:07:15
Speaker
And I've always loved teaching too. So after all of that, even though I had this corporate job, I always had a side hustle that revolved around food as well. So I had a catering company. I featured in people's homes. I ran a separate club out of my San Francisco apartment at the time. I even actually tried out for season two of the next Food Network Star and actually got on. So I did compete against Guy Fieri. That's amazing. Back in the day.
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah, so food was just always a part of my life, and I really just love feeding people. I've always been someone that just loves to nurture in that way. When I left my corporate job, when I turned 30 to start Cooksmarts, I really had no idea what it was going to be. I just knew that we've kind of lost this skill of cooking in our lives. We're all so busy, and everyone needs to eat. And so I really felt like for me, in terms of
00:08:05
Speaker
helping others create a healthier life. Cooking and education was really what I wanted to focus on. So when I started CookSmarts, that was all the idea. I was like, I have this mission that I want to teach people how to cook, but I didn't quite know what the product was going to be. So I actually gave myself a year of market research to really understand, go into people's homes, teach them how to cook, understand what their challenges were.
00:08:28
Speaker
to figure out what the product or service that I would create to help them achieve that mission. That's awesome. And so as you did this market research, what did you notice that led you to this meal planning idea around CookSmarts?
Realizing Meal Planning Potential
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah. So my initial hypothesis really was like, I'm going to build this online cooking school. But as I went into people's homes, a lot of my students then were moms. I taught moms of every socioeconomic class. So I had teenage moms. I teach at a local high school and also more affluent ones as well.
00:08:57
Speaker
And all across the board, everyone actually had the same challenges. Like everyone is really time constrained and knowledge constrained, right? Like nobody feels like they have the time to like grocery shop or like search for recipes and put them together in a cohesive way every single week. And then what, you know, even they did, once they got in the kitchen, they just felt like this was not a fun experience because they didn't have that like foundational skillset to execute efficiently, right? Like I would watch some of my students work and I'm like, wow, like this should take like a third of the amount of the time because
00:09:27
Speaker
they just didn't have the knife skills or would make a huge mess in the kitchen or their kitchen was not organized in a really productive efficient workflow. And so from that I thought, okay, most of these people are not gonna have time to go take an online cooking class, but they do need to already cook dinner and there already are meal plan services out there that seem to be working. So let me piggyback on that idea and just really kind of put in the value out of the educational component. So that's why,
00:09:55
Speaker
We're not just a meal plan service that offers recipes. We really try to make you have a mini cooking lesson every single night. So we use content, so all these short videos that are very modular, very easy to watch with your kids so that you can learn to chop an onion properly or learn to chop a butternut squash finely. So you're really learning to cook while making dinners and that you might want to do anyways.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's kind of how I feel, you know, when it comes to dinner time, right? And I actually all through high school and college worked in kitchens and restaurants and stuff like that. And so I feel like I have even with a little bit of background, but it's just the exhaustion by the end of the day of okay, what's in the fridge and how should I put all this together and we kind of default to sort of the same meals week in and week out. And they're not necessarily unhealthy. But there's probably if we did a little bit of planning in advance, it would probably turn out a little bit better than it does on a nightly basis.
00:10:47
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. So you
CookSmarts' Launch
00:10:49
Speaker
are not alone. You're not alone. Yeah. So as far as actually turning it into a service, what did that look like? Did you go through kind of any iterations in the middle there to get to CookSmarts to where it is today?
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. So as soon as I landed on the meal plan service idea, this is about maybe like six months into my market research. I was like, okay, I'm going to build this meal plan service. So I live out in the Bay area, the heart of Silicon Valley, and there's so many startups around me. And so I thought like, okay, this is the route I'm going to go, you know, I'm going to be the product person, the content person. I need to find a technical co-founder.
00:11:21
Speaker
So I would go on all these founder dates with kind of 20 something male engineers, mainly. That's what's mainly available here. And they were just like, yeah, that sounds interesting, but that doesn't sound like, you know, it sounds like a mom product. And I was like, yeah, what's the problem with that? Like moms are the ones making most of purchasing decisions, you know? And it's not like it's a small market either. You know, it's like weird that you get any pushback. It's like a, this is like a mass market product too, you know? Exactly. Like everybody has to eat. And so.
00:11:50
Speaker
After going on maybe like two months of these like founder dates that I felt like were not going anywhere. No one was really understanding my vision. I decided that like you know what I'm going to learn to code. I'm going to figure this out and do it myself. So I think that was kind of a silly idea in hindsight but it worked. I went to a one of my coding workshops that I went to. I met this other woman who had also just turned 30 and was making a big career change. She was her editor in her previous life.
00:12:14
Speaker
And so the two of us decided, you know, we're going to do this together. She wanted a portfolio project to then, you know, show to software companies to get a job as a software developer. So we joined forces for, and over the course of about five months we learned to code and then just like,
00:12:30
Speaker
jammed it all together and went live in May of 2013. And that first version was not, you know, it wasn't everything I wanted, but it was a start. And over that those six months that I was, you know, building it, I had also started building up our email newsletter list. So I was already giving away kind of building up that, like, you know, understanding that we were going to be offering meal plans. I was giving away meal plans for free, of course, using Excel. They were so ugly then it was awful. But, you know, it was getting the product out there and we were getting good feedback.
00:12:59
Speaker
And then when we went live, we had a list of people that were already kind of knew us as people that were offering meal plans, so we were able to sell to customers immediately on day one.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's so important. I mean, do you feel like you learned a lot even though you were delivering a product in a way that you probably weren't super happy with? You know, you had mentioned that Excel, you know, a little clunky, especially probably back in 2013. So not the prettiest way to deliver stuff. But you're still connecting with people who are interested in your product. And you're still getting feedback. So I mean, did you feel like that was a valuable experience in continuing to build out the CookSmarts?
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah, I was. I mean, honestly, like there's so much power in your email list, right? So like really building an email list lab. And when I think about it in hindsight, that was my biggest mistake is I think I was afraid to build the email list faster because I was worried people would be upset going from a free product to a paid product. But then now I'm thinking like if some people don't sign up, that's not, that's fine. Like, nope, it's not going to be.
00:13:57
Speaker
the end of the world, and people were getting a product for free. And if anything, I should have been really focusing more on building that email list out. But yeah, when I look back, you just have to start somewhere. And we got so much valuable feedback, and it just gave me practice, right? So I wasn't a professional meal planner before this. I was in the corporate world. I really had a lot of understanding of cooking, but I didn't actually have any meal planning background. I would plan meals for myself,
00:14:26
Speaker
Just by practicing, like making myself do it every single week and getting something out there because I had, you know, decided that like that's what we were going to do. We were just getting better. So by the time we launched, I, you know, I had at least like six months of meal planning experience behind me. And, you know, now I've got, you know, eight years worth, but yeah, it was really important to just get going and start doing something.
00:14:46
Speaker
I think so many people, especially if you're listening and you're just getting started with something, there is nothing we're like, don't wait until you have something perfect. I think in some cases, you'll just never end up launching. But it takes time to get to. My guess too is that just with the information that you learned along the way in some of these early days impacted how you ended up building the product. Would that be? Yeah. Yeah. So had you never done that, you would have missed out on all this great experience and then ended up building something that potentially
00:15:13
Speaker
wouldn't have fulfilled the needs that people had to fill or how they use Cooksmarts today. I think that's so important and such a good lesson for people who are out there getting started. I do kind of want to shift the conversation now towards kind of how content played a role in building Cooksmarts. I mean, there's an obvious aspect to it, of course. I mean, each week you're releasing meal plans, but this is the kind of thing that you kind of need to work
00:15:38
Speaker
at scale, you know, in order for it to make sense to you or for you. So how did you build the user base and community up around CookSmarts to kind of make it into what it is today?
Effective Marketing with Infographics
00:15:49
Speaker
Yeah, so I think for us
00:15:51
Speaker
We did not have, for me, I was very much a product person. I understood what the product needed to be, but I did not have a good understanding of marketing. I still don't feel like I have a great understanding of marketing, which is why I love your podcast. Thank you. I really thought through, how do we get the word out without a lot of money? Because I did not have a lot of money at that point. I'd basically taken a year off of work. I've put a lot of money into building this.
00:16:16
Speaker
And there was just not a lot of marketing dollars left. And so I thought we could start making infographics. That's an easy way to get our brand out there and really put our mission out there. We want to teach people about cooking. We want to teach people how to meal plan better. We want to get people back in the kitchen.
00:16:34
Speaker
And so we really kind of identified different topics that might be of interest to people around cooking and meal planning and we created infographics around that. And that was like a really cheap way to kind of get our brand out there because it doesn't cost that much money to get a good graphics designer, you know, do some research for what the content should look like and then get a graphics designer. And so that's kind of what we went with. We created these really like pretty shareable graphics that like media outlets wanted to have on BuzzFeed or HuffPost like wanted to put on and it was they were very shareable on social media.
00:17:03
Speaker
And so that's kind of how we started of like really getting the word out there of what CookSmarts was.
00:17:08
Speaker
You know, it's funny because infographics I think still work just as well today. You know, I mean, like a good infographic, I think can transform a blog post, for instance, and all of a sudden, it's just getting a ton more traffic from Pinterest because people are pinning it all over the place and it's linking back to that blog post or whatever. So that's fascinating. And I think there's just in the food and health space in general, that just seems like such a common tactic to in order to increase like organic traffic to your site.
00:17:35
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. So what other you can show, but image searches, it's like good for SEO. Again, like one of our infographics, a guide to enjoying veggies, which I'll talk more about later, you know, we got it on to my fitness pals blog and that resulted in 20,000 new emails for us and people on our email list for us, like in like a week doubled. I mean, how much did it cost to create that graphic? Probably, you know, I hired like a college intern and paid
00:18:01
Speaker
him like $15 an hour, you know, to create the content. And then our graphics designer was just an amazing, she was so good. It's funny because in the beginning, I think I'm sure every entrepreneur goes through this where they think like they have to do everything themselves. And I was kind of in that boat. So I was trying to create these graphics. I have no graphics design background. I was like trying to figure out like how to use Adobe Illustrator and think it would take me forever. And finally I was like, okay, maybe I should hire someone. But I was worried. I was like, oh my, is this going to cost a lot of money?
00:18:30
Speaker
And she could literally do what I would take like me a week to do in like 10 minutes. And so in the end, I was like, wow, this is such this is money well spent. Yeah, I'm sure it took a cost. It's like.
00:18:41
Speaker
to $300 to create that graphic and resulted in 20,000 email signups. Yeah, amazing. And I'm guessing you didn't pay for it to be on MyFitnessPal's blog. It just got picked up. It just got picked up, exactly. We were doing a content exchange. We were just offering recipes and different things that they could have on their blog because every outlet is looking for good content. So if you create a good infographic, people want that on their site because
00:19:06
Speaker
If they share it on their social media, it drives content back to their blog posts, and then that blog post drives content back to you. So it's kind of like a win-win for everybody. That's just amazing. How do you go about creating content that you think people are interested in?
Content Strategy and Customer Feedback
00:19:21
Speaker
Do you have kind of an approach or steps that you take in order to create content for yourself and come up with some of these ideas that result in these infographics that eventually get picked up by other blogs and result in thousands of email addresses?
00:19:34
Speaker
Yeah, so I wish I'd give you some really good SEO tips of how I go about our research with content marketing. But when I first started, I didn't know what SEO was, so I didn't do any SEO research. But we were lucky that we have basically two channels of member communication. So we really are tapped into our community and are always listening. So I think that really is kind of that first step is just to listen to your customers, your clients, your members, your community. We're not on Instagram. We're not very active on Instagram, but we have a really active Facebook group.
00:20:04
Speaker
And also because of the nature of our product, it's a meal plan service, so there are recipes, people are constantly giving us reviews of the recipes. So those are our two channels for really understanding what people need in terms of knowledge. So I think that first step is really understanding what your client's or customer's gap in knowledge is and how can you fill that with an infographic or a piece of content.
00:20:25
Speaker
I think just in terms of how we create like sort of a list of content that we want to blog about or create YouTube videos about or whatever, simply that I'm on the phone a lot with potential design clients. And it's just jot down questions that they have, you know, what questions I hear over and over and over again, that, you know, eventually just be easier to write a blog post because then during the call, I can say, Hey, listen, I'm gonna send you a great article about this.
00:20:45
Speaker
Exactly. Or questions on, I mean, really anywhere. We speak at a couple of conferences and just typical questions that we get after we speak. But I think if people write those questions down, first, you'll start noting patterns. And second, you'll just never run out of content again. Exactly. Yeah. Just let your customers inform you what they want. And so in our case, because of the Facebook group, people are always asking questions there. And so it's like, OK, yeah. It's just noting those questions. As soon as a question gets asked, we put it into a potential content spreadsheet.
00:21:13
Speaker
And then every year we kind of evaluate like what are the pieces of content that we should really focus on? What are the ones that really kind of kept bubbling up to the top? And so that really informs like that first step. So like identifying the topic. So in one of the examples that I spoke about earlier, the guide to enjoying veggies, like people are always asking about like, how can I get more vegetables in my diet? Like everyone knows that vegetables are good for you, but don't really have good understanding. It's like I can have a salad, I guess, you know, or eating the same like two or three vegetables every week.
00:21:40
Speaker
And so we created this guided enjoying veggies example. And the way that we do that, our second step is after we decide like, okay, this is the piece of knowledge that we want to, you know, this is the gap in knowledge that we want to fill is we create a spreadsheet. And that's just because my like pass as a spreadsheet nerd and, but it's such a great structure for infographics because infographics have to be very organized in terms of like, you know, the content that we're trying to convey. So we find that a spreadsheet is using like Excels is actually better than putting it all into a document. So.
00:22:08
Speaker
That kind of forces us to really organize our thoughts in a way that's easily then translated into that final output of an infographic. And then the third thing we do is just do the research. And usually there's someone on our team or sometimes we hired it out to someone that's focused on that particular piece of content. And they just go and do the research, fill it all in, and then for a thing we pass it on to the graphics designer.
00:22:30
Speaker
And then it's just the iteration process of editing and improving it. And I think it's really important to bring other people into this because I'm sure a lot of folks listening are solopreneurs. And I think when you're the only voice in there, you need other people to make you better. I think so much of that process of improving really involves other people and their input.
00:22:49
Speaker
And so, like I said, as soon as I hired out a real graphic designer and I brought other people into that process, we were able to create just much more valuable and better looking and more engaging type of graphics. And just about hiring and outsourcing and things like that, I mean, you saw probably a pretty immediate return on investment when you ended up hiring that graphic designer to create one of those initial infographics that resulted in 20,000 people on your email list. That single blog post probably paid for itself many times over.
00:23:18
Speaker
So there is a return there, but it's probably less expensive than people think to find a graphic designer that can work on a retainer or work on an hourly basis. So I would agree 100% with that. As far as research goes, are you researching mostly based on the content that you're trying to create? I'm sure it has a little bit to do with that. But then also, is there any sort of search engine optimization aspect to it as well?
00:23:45
Speaker
We have an SEO process in place. We are looking at keywords as we write up that blog post. And then we're making sure to tag that image correctly so that the search engines know what it is. And so for us, I think now that we have a better understanding of all of that, we are better about the keywords. But that's more from the blog post side of things versus the infographic.
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah so you know a lot of times we have to make sure that the blog post has the information that the infographic has because the infographic, that text isn't scannable by Google. At least not now. I'm sure it will be in a year or two. But right now we try to make sure that that blog post also reflects the information that we want to convey as well as capturing all those keywords within that blog post.
00:24:24
Speaker
Yeah, because I imagine more so than probably a lot of people who are listening, your industry is probably much more competitive when it comes to ranking for different keywords. So much so. If you want to rank for easy weeknight chicken recipe, forget about it. Someone else has got that already.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah, there is a lot of food content out there. So it is hard. So we have to be either be really niche about it, which actually helps with the infographic part of things. People are looking for like, you know, when we people do are doing graphic searches, which a lot of people are doing these days, like having something that really stands out and then drives traffic back to your site is really important.
00:25:01
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And just like the power of Pinterest, I don't know how much of like Pinterest referral traffic makes up of, you know, kind of the overall traffic to Cook Smarts, but I got to imagine that it would be a platform that you all do pretty well on. We do. And so when we create these graphics, we really think about like, how can we get the most out of it? So we do create a Pinterest version, right? So we created like a longer vertical version that does well on Pinterest, we create a lead magnet of it so that we can get emails,
00:25:28
Speaker
break it up because you know these are such like information rich things we it's it's hard to digest so then we break them up into smaller pieces that we can then use on social and so we really think about like how are all the different ways that we can take this graphic like and really really make the most out of the work right like how do we really repurpose it in a variety of variety of channels and so that you know it's not just like a one-and-done thing we can really make sure that it it jumps in in a lot of different channels
00:25:52
Speaker
Yeah, but that's so important too, because it probably takes a pretty good amount of time in order to create an infographic or put together the content for a blog post. So I think it's just so valuable in the ways that you split it up to extend the life of that content, but then also be able to distribute over any channel that you want to. Yeah, exactly. One of the things we know that's changed a lot is we can't boost an infographic the way you could on Facebook anymore, just because our infographics have a lot of text. And so making sure to also have some sort of
00:26:21
Speaker
semblance of the infographic on Facebook. So you can use it on a Facebook ad or something so that it can still be promoted on Facebook is important as well as you're creating that graphic. So what are the other kind of pieces of assets you need in order to promote it? Yeah, awesome. I accidentally cut you off there. You were getting to step five.
00:26:39
Speaker
Oh, so step five really is that
Growth Through Imperfect Content Creation
00:26:41
Speaker
that was actually step five really thinking as you're, you know, once you got all that content in place, thinking through like, when you're talking to your designer, these are all the different formats I needed. And you know, I need one for Pinterest, I need one for the download, that PDF download so that you are able to really maximize that piece of content.
00:26:56
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And again, just want to emphasize how important that is. I mean, if you put all that effort into creating the content itself, you want to be able to share it for really as long as that content is valuable. So I think it's important to talk to your designer or if you are your designer, to just create some templates because like for instance, like for the podcast, you'll notice that or for people who listen that see a share about it, we have different templates that go on Pinterest, we have different templates that go on Instagram, but it all it's all, you know, drawing from the same piece of core content. So it doesn't take
00:27:25
Speaker
super long outside of that initial creation of that template for new podcast graphics to be made. Exactly. And I think a lot of it is also thinking about the possibilities for content is endless. And a lot of these stuff were meal plan service, but not all of our infographics are meal plan related. They're adjacent. They're in that same sort of
00:27:44
Speaker
area to really think through like what are other things your customers might need besides the specific thing that you might be teaching that's still kind of adjacent to what you're teaching so that can still help them out and drive traffic back to you. Yeah. Why do you think so many people struggle with content creation? I think a lot of it is creatives. We're hard on ourselves. We are so we are such perfectionists. One of the things that has helped me is there is a German filmmaker named Daniel Sax and he made this short like two minute
00:28:12
Speaker
video with Ira Glass talking and Ira Glass of This American Life fame. He's a creative and he was just talking about like yeah people are really obsessed with perfection as the goal but how important it is just to get started like we talked about earlier like the stuff that you make in the beginning and you know you have the taste you know have the skills but the stuff you do in the beginning might not just might not be where your expectations of what you want to be are but you just have to start
00:28:35
Speaker
Like I said, when I look back at my old plans, even after we launched the service, I look back at those initial recipes or those first couple of infographics or blog posts, it makes me cringe. I want to take them down, but I also know it's important to have them up there just to recognize that it is an evolution and every day we're all practicing. There are a few people who are really masters of what they are doing. We're all practicing. I know you just started a Facebook ads company.
00:29:03
Speaker
And it's one of the things that Facebook ads is constantly changing so like every, you know, I'm like, if you just like waited till you mastered everything like Facebook would just change everything on you and then you'd never get started. Exactly. So I think really like my mantra these days is really like the practice makes progress and not practice makes perfect. So, you know, we just have to be progressing every day. And I think in creative work, I think that a lot of people also maybe have like a little bit of imposter syndrome too. It's like, well, like what, you know, do I have what it takes to be a coach or,
00:29:30
Speaker
in this specific area, but a lot of it really is just that if you have the desire and you're willing to be a professional about it, that's really all it takes. And just to start and use those initial initial interactions with clients as, like I said, what we did with market research, right? Like we just use that, those initial email newsletters out there as learnings so that we could improve. And that has made all the difference and we're still improving every day our product.
00:29:54
Speaker
you know every year we go through like what are the things that could really help our clients that will help our members out and we make those changes and there's still so many things I want to do and yeah it's all about just getting out there and doing it. I think there's some level of looking back and you should almost want to cringe.
00:30:10
Speaker
You know, when you look back five years ago and look at your work because it means that you've made progress yourself. It means that you've come a long ways from, you know, where you were. So I think if you are growing, there's always going to be that level of looking back at old stuff that you've done and saying, or maybe at least feeling like I, you know, I can't believe that's where I was or, you know, it just, just this understanding that, you know, you've made progress over so many years.
00:30:33
Speaker
I think people really, there's this fear, especially when you're creative, there's this huge fear of rejection. We are worried that we put the work out there and people don't respond to it. You create a webinar, nobody attends, and I think sometimes that worry really just hinders us from doing everything.
00:30:51
Speaker
I think for that, it's totally okay to worry, and it's okay to have fear, but I would take the two-year-old approach. I have a two-year-old, a four-year-old, and a baby, and I look at those kids, and they own their feelings. They're so upset in the moment, and then five minutes later, they're just fine. I think it's totally okay to worry and have that fear, and just be like, okay, I'm gonna feel this now, and then the next five minutes, move on, actually get moving, and sit down and write out the list of things you need to do to make sure that you are actually moving forward versus staying still.
00:31:21
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I want to chat about too is sort of a shift in, I guess maybe language that you're using or just the shift that you're making in your own business in 2020, you know, and you're going to have to remind me it was in my notes or it was in the email.
00:31:36
Speaker
that i didn't end up printing out but maybe like really are there being less mental less mental low yes labor yes this is been a huge shift for us i think for us over the last the first seven years we've been around you know we've been marking is like hey we're a way to help you eat healthier you know you need you wanna cook but you don't have the time to plan for meals like let us give you these already organized meal plans for you and over the last four years i've had three kids
00:32:04
Speaker
And so I've been pretty kind of just like drowning in like the mental labor of life, right? Like all the invisible labor that so many parents have to do, like managing, like what, like packing washes, family vacations, like meal planning of one, you know, one of the big ones. Cause we all have to eat multiple times a day. And when you have kids, it just feels like a never ending, never ending list of like, oh my God, like now they need to eat again. Like what am I going to feed them again?
00:32:28
Speaker
And so I think that's what like Cooksmarts really is. It's like really, yes, we can provide you with meal plans, but really it is like a relief from your to-do list, like to really reducing and lightening that load.
00:32:39
Speaker
of yet another thing that a parent often has to do that nobody really acknowledges. That is real
Reducing Meal Planning Mental Load
00:32:45
Speaker
work. It takes a lot of mental energy to think about what you're going to cook for the week. And if nobody does that, then the grocery shopping doesn't work out well, and then the meals don't work out well, and the week just feels really stressful. And so it compounds in that way. And so when someone doesn't do that planning, it results in a lot of
00:33:03
Speaker
a lot more stress later on in the week. So we really think about ourselves really more about like, let us help you just relieve that mental load. How do we lighten the load for you, reduce the mental energy that you need to take?
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's just such an insightful, or it's such a great insight on y'all's part. You know, ultimately, that's what a lot of us are trying to do, right? Is trying to ease that mental load. I mean, even when it comes to like getting people a website template and getting them set up with a website. And I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces when it comes to that sort of thing. And so how can we kind of take the pressure off people so that you know, it's as plug and play when they're sending up a template from us.
00:33:35
Speaker
But I don't know, there was something about that line that you included that really resonated with me. Maybe it's just the season of life, you know, also being a new parent where a lot of those things that you're talking about, you know, with kids certainly resonates right now. It just feels like for us to do anything that we want or anything that used to take us five minutes to do now takes us 20 minutes to do. I think a great example of it is just anybody who's ever flown without kids and then has a kid and
00:34:02
Speaker
it has to get on a flight, you know, it's like, it is a whole different ballgame. So yeah, I mean, love Jack, love, love my boy. But there's definitely that invisible list just in kind of everything that you're doing throughout the day, there's just that a few extra steps there. So I think that's such a great insight from you all. And just in terms of like, from a marketing perspective to really focusing on, you know, the benefit that you all provide people
00:34:25
Speaker
you know, people are getting healthier if they're using your meal plans, it's easier on their day. But at the end of the day, I mean, that's, I think, one of the primary benefits. So I think that's great. Maybe we could wrap up here by talking about some meal planning tips. I know that I could certainly benefit from them. I will say that I am the guy who like, I mean, I like vegetables and all, but I pretty much stick to eating the same
00:34:47
Speaker
vegetables every week. It's broccoli, a couple salad, that sort of thing. But I don't get very creative with things.
00:34:55
Speaker
Yeah, so I'd love to learn more about your current challenges, David. So is it, are you bored of your routine? You're kind of stuck in a dinner rut. Do you guys want to introduce more recipes into your life? Yeah, I think, you know, Krista for sure would eat from a broader meal plan, right? For me, it's like just easy, like tacos to me are easy. So shrimp tacos, carne asada, chicken tacos. But you know, when you're having tacos four nights a week, Krista is like, please,
00:35:19
Speaker
let's not have tacos tonight, right? And then you throw, you know, like we might have chicken and broccoli, salmon is a staple in there. So it's not necessarily that we don't eat well, but like, we probably eat the same four or five meals every single week. If we're going to incorporate vegetables into our meal, it's like stir fry, which I don't know. And there's nothing, stir fry is a perfect like, let's put everything in the kitchen sink type of, you know, meal template. So we love stir fries.
00:35:47
Speaker
Yeah. So I think really like when I tell people in terms of meal planning tips, my first thing is, you know, pick the meal planning system. The best meal planning system is the meal planning system you can stick with, right? So it's like, if you do something that's like so extreme, that's like really not going to work for you, you're not going to stick with that, right? So I always tell people like the whole, you know, again, going back to practice makes progress. So just start somewhere, right? So if you, your current, it sounds like for you, like you're stuck in a bit of a dinner rut, I would just keep like
Meal Planning Flexibility Tips
00:36:14
Speaker
two to three of those recipes that you are doing that you already like enjoy, you know, the family likes and just add like maybe one or two more each week, right? I think like small, that's a pretty small ass, like with just one small incremental change. It's not like, let's just forget all the tacos and put in all these new things that like seem like probably like very undoable for a family with a young kid. Again, like
00:36:34
Speaker
researching for one or two recipes a week isn't that tough and for us we have a lot of I think a lot of folks when they sign up for a meal plan service the ones that churn the one that quit really feel like that it's homework or like feel like if they don't make all four meals like our menus have four meals a week versus five or seven because we feel like a lot of people just have decision fatigue right so it's like four is a good number for people to start with so
00:36:58
Speaker
Like we've seen like the members that have been with us for like seven years, they actually choose often just two meals of ours and then they either bring in two from the archives that they've already made before and know that everybody will love or like they have some standbys of their own. But it's not like, you know, if you don't use the recipes, they don't go to waste, right? Like they're always there for you. And so we tell people like... Yeah, I didn't really think about that. It's like better than a HelloFresh or something like that. We, you know, failed. Like we used to use something like, are you familiar with HelloFresh? Yep, yep.
00:37:25
Speaker
Yeah, and it was one of those things where like if we stop because like two out of four or five of the meals that they send every week, we just not be into and felt like all this food is going to waste. But what's interesting about what you're doing, right? I mean, you can just keep the meals from previous meal plans, right? And make them at a later date. So you have sort of this archive and you have, you can probably put aside favorites pretty easy that you definitely want to make again.
00:37:50
Speaker
Yeah, we have a whole collections feature now that you can like collect things that you want to make in the future that maybe won't work for you that week. So like, you know, if you go through the week that you look the menu, it's like, okay, maybe you just make the two quickest meals. And then there's a meal that looks really good, but you know, like you have a really busy schedule next week. So this just doesn't make sense. Save that for like a week when you have a little bit more time or the weekend or something, you know, so we're really flexible. We had actually had a member post yesterday who does she's someone that doesn't like salmon. And she was like, really trying to get
00:38:17
Speaker
Like just like motivated to make the salmon posted on our Facebook group being like, I really want to follow the plans religiously, but I don't like salmon. It's somewhat like all people are just being like, why then just make it sub something else or like bring in another meal. Like no one is Neil plan monitor.
00:38:32
Speaker
Are you making all four meals and you're making them exactly the way that it states? So I think like once people get into our Facebook community and kind of understand like, oh, everybody's using this in a different way. So much about it is like everybody eats differently. Like yes, we all have to eat, but everybody has, some people have kids, some people don't have kids, some people work like night shifts and some people hate leftovers. So everyone needs to eat in different ways. So our meal plan service is like, I feel like of all the services out there are the most customizable because we really have listened to our members and understand that like everyone is different. And so,
00:39:00
Speaker
you know you customize for serving sizes you can for every meal we have a and it's a lot of work for us but it like really makes sense for people as we have a gluten-free paleo and vegetarian version because we have a lot of diet blended families so like you might have one vegetarian in the family or one paleo person or you're a family that like wants to eat vegetarian twice a week but you don't want to be like vegetarian completely so like we just make all of that possible
00:39:23
Speaker
And then we also have weekend prep steps for folks that do want to get ahead, but like also assuming that a lot of people don't have that sort of like planning gene in them that can also make the meals without any prep steps. So it just, yeah, it works for everybody. And I think some people, you know, the resistance is like, Oh, like I want to have the control over this, but then they're doing something that's still not up to what they, you know, their expectations are. And so I think just give it a try. And if it doesn't work, you can do something else. It's totally fine.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, another thing, Chris is gluten free. So that I feel like that sometimes throws a wrench into meal planning because it's like, well, then I would be making something separate or completely separate than maybe what Chris is having and that's not efficient. And so we just kind of default to really safe recipes. I think that like tacos, for instance, like we can get corn tortillas and then voila, it's a it's a gluten free meal. So we kind of default to these sort of safe meals. And again, I could probably eat the same thing every day for
00:40:16
Speaker
you know, the rest of my life. But Krista, I know would appreciate a little bit more variety than we have now. And I know, especially on like a vegetable level that I could probably use a little bit more variety in my meals as well. But that's awesome. It sounds like they are incredibly flexible. Where can people go to learn more about CookSmarts? Is this Facebook group a user group? So like, for people to join, would they need to be users of CookSmarts first? Yeah, so people can find out more about CookSmarts just on CookSmarts.com. Remember the S?
00:40:44
Speaker
And then the Facebook group is a user group, but anybody, so when you go to our site, there's a 30-day free trial. So anyone that has signed up for the trial can go ahead and get in the group. And you know, we make it very easy to cancel because we realize people are busy and nobody, I don't want to be that company that's like, let's try to trick people into like signing up for the service and making it really hard. So like you can cancel before the billing date, 30 days and there's no skin off or back and you can still be part of the Facebook group.
00:41:10
Speaker
And so I think for a lot of people the facebook group is so helpful because a lot of us are actually very creative you probably are like spending a lot of time by yourself and I do think that having a community of people that you can talk to about something else as like mundane as meal planning or you know what you're having for dinner is actually like really fun and it's one of the reasons people really love the group it's like they feel
00:41:30
Speaker
a little bit more motivated when they see other people posting photos of the groups and photos of their meals and you know the photos these are not like these are not the photos you sent them or Pinterest they're just like really the north like this is what people's dinners really look like you know when they're not there's not a food stylist and like perfect lighting and all that stuff and I think that really actually helps people make some more excited to cook than like when they look at the Instagram photos where it feels very much like unattainable.
00:41:54
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Well, I think that we're going to go ahead and sign up for that 30 day free trial. I'll make sure that all of these links are included in the show notes as well so that people who are interested in learning more or interested in signing up for a free trial can go ahead and do that. But thank you so much for taking the time today to share about content creation. Of course, it was so much fun to talk to you. Thank you so much, Davey, for having me on.
00:42:17
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.